Oil & Fuel Battery Tender Success Story?

[dickfoster]

No, I think it's the extremes on either side.

Hot temps boil off fluid a lot faster, permanently crippling it. Freezing is bad because water expands around freezing, crushing/deforming plates and shorting them out.

100% charged batteries in freezing temps survive because sulfuric acid has a lower freezing point than water. But let's be honest, unless you are diligent, you are going to enter the freezing temps at less than a full charge. There is a long time between autumn when you winterize equipment and deep winter storage for a battery to discharge before freezing.

And hot air temps, in a hot engine compartment, boil off water, and that's bad. You can't park tools just because it's summer and hot, so it's going to happen, especially if you have AC and you are down south.

Keeping the correct water level, diligence of storage, state of charge, and sheer luck helps in longevity.

There is no arguing that keeping batteries on maintainers that may sit idle or get drained by electronics can't hurt. If your charging system is perfect and you have no parasitic drain while idle, then awesome. For the rest of us, we will prolong batteries with relatively inexpensive maintainers.

It's helpful to understand that what happens inside a battery is a chemical reaction and chemical reactions are always slowed as temperatures drop while they speed up as temperature rises. The rule of thumb is about twice or double for every 7 degrees C (45F) of temp change.
On one very cold Wyoming morning ,about -20F, my car would not start. You typically got one or two shots at it. It was going to take a while for me to get a jump, the whole town was having the same problem. To prevent the battery from freezing until they could get around to me I rigged up a flood lamp and pointed it at the battery then went back inside. By the time they got around to me I checked and found that I had melted the battery caps. Before they could get the jumper cables on, I gave it a try and it spun right over and started just fine. This was because the chemical reaction necessary to produce the current required was now active enough from the higher temperature the battery was now able to work at.

BTW you can use that same rule of thumb to speed other chemical reactions up like getting epoxy glue to cure. Stick a heat gun on it and the glue will kick over in just a few seconds, even the 12 hour stuff. Don't set it on fire though. 7 degrees hotter and the reaction time halves, another 7 degrees and it halves again and so on. Vis versa going the other way, if you want it to slow things down, just cool it off.

 

[Industrial Toys]

No battery charger is really good unless it has an external temperature sensor. It can't be. As temperature is so critical in the charging process formula. A friend in the battery/inverter business just gave me a few more intelligent chargers (take outs) and I am pleased to see that one has the mod plug input for the sensor.

 

[Travelover]

No battery charger is really good unless it has an external temperature sensor. ..........

I'm sure a temperature sensor is better, but I doubt that one in a hundred here have a battery charger to fit that description. And I'd bet most of us have gotten along just fine, so far.

 

[Industrial Toys]

I think chargers, tenders and desulfators are marketed much like laundry detergent. Since it is almost impossible for the average person to ever prove or disprove the claims, the manufacturers can claim just about anything that sells well.

I would love to be proven wrong and see some real autopsy like study showing that voltage spikes or high frequency, introduced into a battery, break down sulfation, for I don't buy it. Why are we throwing away millions of batteries that only need to be desulfated?

 

[KennyG]

No battery charger is really good unless it has an external temperature sensor. It can't be. As temperature is so critical in the charging process formula. A friend in the battery/inverter business just gave me a few more intelligent chargers (take outs) and I am pleased to see that one has the mod plug input for the sensor.

The temperature sensors must be a rarity now. I haven't seen on in years. Back before "sealed" batteries, the good chargers had a temperature sensor you would put in one of the cells to actually monitor electrolyte temperature. However, I would guess the electronics and logic behind the voltage and rate of charge monitoring on the modern charges is pretty good.

 

[dickfoster]

I think chargers, tenders and desulfators are marketed much like laundry detergent. Since it is almost impossible for the average person to ever prove or disprove the claims, the manufacturers can claim just about anything that sells well.

I would love to be proven wrong and see some real autopsy like study showing that voltage spikes or high frequency, introduced into a battery, break down sulfation, for I don't buy it. Why are we throwing away millions of batteries that only need to be desulfated?

:laughing: What is it that you do not understand about people wanting to sell stuff and keep selling stuff? They all want to be in the razor blade business. If you do some research you will find that it does indeed work. You can keep on spending your money on batteries if you want, it's no skin off of anyones nose but your own. You can be led to water but you can't be made to drink. Someone could probably post up the whole electrochemical reaction formula and you likely still wouldn't believe it but only because it's something new to you and you simply don't want to understand or be sold. That's OK too. I've used it and saved myself some money so I'm a believer. I'm also a hard sell but not an impossible sell. I usually do a lot of research into something new and if it makes sense and has scientific reasoning to back it up, I'll buy into it. I looked hard into this and was convinced. Then I bought one and proved it for myself. It's called progress. It's why we all aren't still living in caves and beating our dinner in the head with a stick. With all the crap you have listed, one would think you'd be the first to jump on since you'd have the most to gain. :confused3:

BTW I've found that AGM batteries are also worth the extra investment but you probably don't want to believe that either but it's OK with us.

 

[ArlyA]

Well, I read somewhere that most battery's fail, because of sulfurization of its plates. I also tend to think most people would place there charger on a battery would do so at temperatures 50 to 80. Not extreme lows or highs were temperatures would be important. We only add chargers to our static machines over the summer months.

Call me stupid,,,,,, but I've got 2 chargers with the de-sulfurization feature and it does seem to work.

 

[DK35vince]

All I know is I just sold a 2007 dual sport motorcycle, still had the original battery.
My 2009 street bike still running original battery.
My pickup truck battery is 11 years old and still going.
My original tractor battery lasted 11 years.
None have ever has a battery tender on them.

 

[Fallon]

The desulfization stuff sounds like snake oil, but isn't. You can make your own for $5-10 from some simple parts. It's by no means a miracle cure, but it does help extend battery life a fair bit.

 

[ultrarunner]

I was given some VX6 battery rejuvenator and tried it on my 6 volt battery that would not hold a charge and it worked...

No idea what is in it... I was 16 at the time.